David Lehman
David Lehman (born June 11,June 11, Poetry 180, Library of Congress. Web, Nov. 8, 2014. 1948) is an American poet, editor, and academic, best known for being the series editor for The Best American Poetry.series of poetry anthologies.David Lehman, Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, Web, Jan. 24, 2012. Life Lehman was born in New York City, the son of European Holocaust refugees, and grew up in Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood of Inwood. He attended Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University, and Cambridge University in England on a Kellett Fellowship. He later received a Ph.D. in English from Columbia, where he was Lionel Trilling's research assistant. Lehman's poem "The Presidential Years" appeared in The Paris Review No. 43 (Summer, 1968) while he was a Columbia undergraduate. His books of poetry include Yeshiva Boys (November 2009), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), The Daily Mirror (2000), and Valentine Place (1996), all published by Scribner. Princeton University Press published Operation Memory (1990), and An Alternative to Speech (1986). He collaborated with James Cummins on a book of sestinas, Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and with Judith Hall on a book of poems and collages, Poetry Forum (Bayeux Arts, 2007). Lehman has edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present (Scribner, 2008), and Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003), among other anthologies. He has written 6 nonfiction books, including, most recently, A Fine Romance: Jewish songwriters, American songs (Nextbook, 2009), for which he received an ASCAP Deems Taylor award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.[http://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/17968/facing-the-music/ A 2009 podcast featuring Lehman on A Fine Romance]David Lehman on Poetry Nethttp://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/awards/deems_taylor/index.html In an interview published in Smithsonian Magazine, Lehman discusses the artistry of the great lyricists: “The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy ... these lyricists needed to work within boundaries, to get complicated emotions across and fit the lyrics to the music, and to the mood thereof. That takes genius.”Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, October 07, 2009, Smithonian.com Lehman’s other books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library; The Big Question (1995); The Line Forms Here (1992) and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991). His study of detective novels, The Perfect Murder (1989), was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. A new edition of The Perfect Murder appeared in 2000. In 1994 he succeeded Donald Hall as the general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry series, a position he held for twelve years. With Star Black, Lehman originated and was co-director of the famed KGB Bar Monday night poetry series and co-editor of The KGB Bar Book of Poems (HarperCollins, 2000). Lehman’s work has been translated into 16 languages, including Spanish, Russian, French, Polish, Chinese, and Mongolian. Lehman is series editor of The Best American Poetry (Scribner), which he initiated in 1988. Books Lehman edited in the 1980s include Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 65 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems (1987; expanded, 1996), James Merrill, Essays in Criticism (with Charles Berger, 1983), and Beyond Amazement: New Essays on John Ashbery (1980). He has written on a variety of subjects for journals ranging from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal to The American Scholar, The Atlantic, Smithsonian and Art in America. He has taught in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City since the program's inception in 1996 and has served as poetry coordinator since 2003. Lehman teaches at The New School in New York City. He divides his time between New York City and Ithaca, New York,.David Lehman at bestamericanpoetry.com He is married to Stacey Harwood. Writing In an interview with Tom Disch in the Cortland Review Lehman addresses his great variety of poetic styles: “I write in a lot of different styles and forms on the theory that the poems all sound like me in the end, so why not make them as different from one another as possible, at least in outward appearance? If you write a new poem every day, you will probably have by the end of the year, if you’re me, an acrostic, an abecedarium, a sonnet or two, a couple of prose poems, poems that have arbitrary restrictions, such as the one I did that has only two words per line.”Tom Disch talks with David Lehman, The Courtland Review Recognition Lehman has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and received an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award. Publications Poetry *''An Alternative to Speech''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. *''Operation Memory''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. *''Valentine Place: Poems''. New York: Scribner, 1996. *''The Daily Mirror: A journal in poetry''. New York: Scribner, 2000. *''The Evening Sun: A journal in poetry''. New York: Scribner, 2002. *''When a Woman Loves a Man: Poems''. New York: Scribner, 2005. *''Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man: Sestinas'' (with James Cummins). Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2005. *''Poetry Forum: A Play Poem: A Pl'em'' (with Judith Hall). Calgary, AB: Bayeux Arts, 2007. *''Yeshiva Boys: Poems''. New York: Scribner, 2009. *''New and Selected Poems''. New York: Scribner, 2013. Non-fiction *''The Perfect Murder: A study in detection''. New York: Free Press, 1989. *''Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the fall of Paul de Man''. New York: Poseidon Press, 1991. *''The Line Forms Here''. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992. *''The Big Question''. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. *''The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets''. New York: Doubleday, 1998. *''A Fine Romance: Jewish songwriters, American songs''. New York: NextBook / Schocken, 2009. Edited *''Beyond Amazement: New essays on John Ashbery''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. *''James Merrill: Essays in criticism'' (edited with Charles Berger). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. *''Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 85 leading contemporary poets select and comment on their poems''. New York: Macmillan / London: Collier Macmillan, 1996; Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005. *''The KGB Bar Book of Poems'' (with Star Black). New York: Harper Perennial, 2000. *''Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the present''. New York: Scribner, 2003. *''A.R. Ammons: Selected Poems''. New York: Library of America, 2006. *''The Oxford Book of American Poetry''. Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. *''The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the present''. New York: Scribner, 2008. ''Best American Poetry'' *''The Best American Poetry'' (annual anthology). New York: Scribner, 1988- . (with guest editors John Ashbery (1988), Donald Hall (1989), Jorie Graham (1990), Mark Strand (1991), Charles Simic (1992), Louise Glück (1993), A.R. Ammons (1994), Richard Howard (1995), Adrienne Rich (1996), James Tate (1997), John Hollander (1998), Robert Bly (1999), Rita Dove (2000), Robert Hass (2001), Robert Creeley (2002), Yusef Komunyakaa (2003), Lyn Hejinian (2004), Paul Muldoon (2005), Billy Collins (2006), Heather McHugh (2007), Charles Wright (2008), David Wagoner (2009), Amy Gerstler (2010), Kevin Young (2011)). *''The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997'' (with Harold Bloom). Scribner, 1998. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:David Lehman, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Nov. 8, 2014. Audio / video *''Poetry Reading, 22 Feb. 1979 at Hamilton College'' (cassette). Clinton, NY: Hamilton College, 1979. *''Poetry Reading, 30 Apr. 1980 at Hamilton College'' (cassette). Clinton, NY: Hamilton College, 1980. *''Poetry Reading, 16 April 1981 at Hamilton College'' (cassette). Clinton, NY: Hamilton College, 1981. Except where noted, discographical information courtesy WorldCat. See also *List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *"June 11" at Poetry 180 *Two poems by David Lehman at Awl *Three poems at the Cortland Review *David Lehman profile & 14 poems at the Academy of American Poets *David Lehman b. 1948 at the Poetry Foundation. *David Lehman at PoemHunter (56 poems) ;Prose *"The Questions of Postmodernism" (essay) ;Audio / video *David Lehman at YouTube *[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment-jan-june06-lehman_05-09/ Editor of Oxford Book of American Poetry discusses the anthology] on PBS ;Books *David Lehman at Amazon.com ;About *[http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/626/ Review of The Last Avant-Garde] *[http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0998/lehman/ Lehman Explains Motivation for The Last Avant-Garde] *A Q&A with poet David Lehman at NPR, 2013. * David Lehman pages at The Best American Poetry Official website. } Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Columbia University alumni Category:American poets Category:20th-century poets Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Jewish poets Category:Jewish American writers Category:Poetry anthologists Category:People from New York City